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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Ok, I'm plugging away in two graduate programs (counseling and ABA), and I've finished my Life Coach certification (yay!) and started my life coaching business teaching social skills to pre-teens, teens, and young adults with special needs. I spend hard hours each day planning local presentations, writing articles and press releases, meeting with my first clients, and still homeschooling my kids and feeding the dogs. Yea, phew! However, behind all the work is a vision, and I continue to have Bridget on my ass about getting out there with the spirituality of ABA. Her vision and my vision are relentless!

I am learning how to build my own business website as fast as I can, along with enewsletters, ebooks, online marketing and website monetizations (anyone want online tarot readings here??) I take two steps forward, and one back, every day it seems! Friends send me information on manifestation, the Law of Attraction, instant healing and how to use spiritual practice to build personal and monetary success. The Law of Attraction reminds me of good old spell casting! One of my favorite spells goes along familiar lines: "I call to me the power of (state your desire), and I release from myself any blocks to receiving (name the desire again)." It is a great spell, by the way, and should work well with manifesting.

One of the interesting things my friends tell me about manifesting is the importance of NOT stating or thinking: "I want." Want, so the theory goes, points to the lack of something. Thus I want money translates into universe speak to "I have no money," and then the universe responds to that lack by sending more wanting, and so you don't get money. It is an interesting point, and I've spent the last month or so trying to erase the word "want" from my vocabulary. I am using the words of intention instead, i.e "I intend to have 3 new clients by the end of March," (that worked), and "I intend to publish a new blog post every week." (worked as well!)

Between the intentions and the spell casting, my life is super busy ("I release from myself any block from getting an A this semester. . ." and "I call to me the power of a new house. . ."). Between spell casting and intentions and manifesting, I've gotten a wonderful new home for me and my kids, straight A's (so far) for the semester, great recommendations from clients, three upcoming speaking engagements, my life coach certification, a business plan that several business coaches have all approved, and a bunch of new friendships.

But I really miss the word want.

I do want, despite the manifesting, the spell casting, the laws of attraction. I want more. I want a diet coke. I want a retirement account. I want my children to get all the education they need. I want national health care. I want to end global warming.

And some of these things I lack (retirement, national health care, a diet coke), and some are more than just personal lack. I want nationalized healthcare beyond my own lack of health insurance - I want a society that provides for all people like every other industrial nation on earth.

Which brings me to desire. In current American speak, "I want" implies desire. As in "I want you." As in "I want hot sex." As in "I want public transportation for all." Desire is a sexy word, and can imply sex, but it is also more than sex. I desire political change as much as I desire good sex. (Hey, both are important!) Desire has become this word we rarely use, and want has mostly come to replace it. Yet even setting aside the laws of attraction, wanting has a lack implied to it, as in the noun form of the word. Want can mean poverty, loss. To be in want is to be without something important, necessary. Thus I want nationalized health care is apt, in that we in the States don't have either nationalized or adequate health care anywhere. We are all in want.

But I want to embrace desire. Because my desire for nationalized health care is beyond the lacking and the state of want. I desire nationalized health care as a deep wellspring of my being. I believe in providing for all and nationalized health care is part of that wellspring of me. I desire hot sex the same way, and I desire education for my children, and I desire just retirement for all, and I desire time and energy with my friends and loved ones and I desire new roses in the spring. Desire is more than want, more than lack, more than sex but certainly part of our innate sexualness.

Audre Lorde, that marvelous Black lesbian feminist poet and activist, wrote of the politics of the erotic. She wrote about the incredible political wellspring that the erotic can be, that in embracing our sexuality and erotic selves we come close to being whole, true, empowered, aware, political. Lorde named the erotic one of our inherent resources. She wrote of desire as a source of great strength and power. (Read her amazing essay here)

And I remember my own sermon, for my ordination back 24 years ago (eek!). I preached that evening on wanting. I spoke about the way we are taught to want in our culture: we want a diet coke. we want a new car. we want a new ipod. Wanting becomes commercialized. I spoke 24 years ago on wanting as a means to find our deepest longings, which inevitably leads to political change. We want clean air. We want clean water. We want safe schools. We want good jobs.

Now I am thinking of Lorde and my own sermon, the laws of attraction, manifestation, spell casting. I support prayers and spells and puja, and I am manifesting, attracting from the universe, and working with universal laws everyday - for school, for my kids, for Bridget. And I've started looking carefully at my use of the word "want."

And no matter what I attract, what I spell cast for, what I pray for, I still live as an embodied woman, alive with desire. Hey everyone, go puja, go pray, go manifest. We are living in amazing and changing times, and I want to encourage all of us to get out and manifest, spell cast, pray. But I wanna make sure we none of us give up desiring. Desire is at the heart of so much of our power, so much of creation, so much of change.

Surely desire is inherent to attraction anyway. Go desire something, someone, some change. Just desire. We can build some laws of desiring, on the journey of our soulpaths, on our walk with deity. So go desire. Desire with all your heart and being. Who knows the power and energy we will find, in our own simple, heartfelt desire.